Disclaimer:This is complementary set sponsored by Ujene. However, Ujene didn’t demand anything from me. Therefore this review is solely my independent and honest opinion about the products and hopefully you will learn a little bit about their product here.

I received the steady-packed parcel by little surprise. To be more precise, personally I was impressed by their professional way in handling the parcel. First, I did not expect they will send me a full size product, all I asked was a trial set that can last for at least 1 week usage, so I can try and do a preliminary review. Each product was wrapped with bubble wrap, they were not only came with purchase accessories like brochure, sample sachets and shopping bag, but also compliance with custom rules by including product MSDS. I was pleased with the “virtual shopping” experience.

Product packaging. Among the three products, the serum is in elegant appearance with friendly button pump. It does have good amount of weight. The day cream comes in decent practical jar but the soft tube of eye gel looked rather substandard considered the steep price.

Generally I was looking forward to experiencing the eye gel most before I tried the products, expecting the serum to surprise me most and assuming the day cream to be mediocre most. After using for more than 3 months, my mind changed. The day cream served my current skin condition best, the serum touched my heart most and the eye gel disappointed me most.

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Ujène Puriste Collagen Eye gel, S56 / 15g

As I was constantly in searching of better eye care, I do hope meeting a lovely eye care product by chance. It doesn’t have to carry big international trademark but must show proven result – to treat fine lines and show visible improvement after a reasonable period. This eye gel has lightweight gel texture, non-irritating and feeling gentle. It worked fine when the climate is very humid here that my fine lines are hidden themselves perfectly without any skin care product. However, it failed to show any appreciable result when I used it after the fine lines shown, yet it highlighted the lines on the dehydrated area. Well, obviously it is not functioning as wrinkle filler. Talking about my puffy eye bag… I think that would depend on how much water I drink before sleep. I don’t have dark circle so I could not justify on that. However the freckles around my eye zone appeared lighter than the freckles on other areas, I would give the credit to all three products because I used them on eye zone all times. In a nutshell, it loads a bundle of goodies in a tube but I can go without this.

The Collagen Puriste Collagen serum on the other hand reminded me of Rojukiss Protox serum, a serum that I loved very much in the past. This serum has 10% OVILUXE with dewy consistency and easily absorbed into skin, instantly giving skin slightly “tightened” and “lifted” feel. Skin is feeling full, firm and bouncy though the skin is slightly sticky touch in first few minutes upon application in humid environment. I normally go with 1/3 of the pump for subtle hydrating effect. Nevertheless, the serum absorbed and dried on skin relatively fast with lower air humidity. Ingredient wise, it is certainly more premium than ordinary hydrating serum, it loads ton of hydrating goodies in a bottle. Overall, this acts as a good complimentary for dehydrated skin.

When the serum left sticky film on skin in humid day, this Puriste Day Cream can immediately ease the stickiness. Well, I like rich moisturizer but afraid of pore pore-clogging and cause breakout, hence I always use rich facial oil which serves my skin wonderfully. It gives matte finish, melts into skin effortlessly, non-greasy, non-sticky, did not clog my pores, instead it made skin felt temporary “tightened” and “lifted”. The longer I use this day cream, my fondness for it deepen.

Although it is Day cream but it does not contain sunscreen ingredient so I actually use it day and night. I guess the lightweight cream texture is meant for day use. As the cream it very spreadable and it feels traceless on (dry) skin quickly, ideally use in morning particularly it saved my skin care time and serve as good base of makeup. For the amount used for each application, it lasts for 3-4 months.

Overall I have pleasant experience with the products. I did not suffer any adverse effect from these products despite sometimes it caused a little warmness to skin on application. If you purely ask for good ingredients with eco-friendly principle, these are nice try if you are fine with the price tag. If you are expecting luxury richness for its price, this might not satisfying you.

Excuse me, I have never seen this type of wash room. At hotel lobby, Ladies wash room, haha.

My bed at Grand Hotel. The room has heater… yeah!

Nice view from room window. They covered the flower seedling from direct sun light, the garden should look pretty in summer then.

Gregory Lake. I enjoyed leisure walk in nice weather.

Horse riding in Gregory lake.

Lakeside holiday chalet

Many European style of hotels in Nuwara Eliya

The busy small town in Nuwara Eliya.

We went to historical town Kandy next day. Colourful elephant carvings in Wood Craft gallery in Kandy

In Kandy, we had been to Gem stone gallery, Batik gallery, Wood craft gallery and Elephant camp. The are rather small-scaled and commercialized. Every August, a Buddhist festival Esala Perahera will be held at Kandy. Did you see the Golden roof Buddhist temple in the picture?

I lacked of interest to shop in Colombo actually, only went to Odel department store near by. This is small high-end department store, merchandise price is indeed lower compared to most countries, especially garment. However, many designs are also more on Indian’s style. Some of my group members went to House of Fashion – Branded Garment Outlet Store, didn’t have much luck to find what they liked due to the garment style too, but they bought some toys, childrenswear and men shirt at incredible low price.

Street view of Colombo city

While my yellow-skin was rarely seen in most smaller towns, I was friendly approached by people whenever I was alone in park, temple, hotel… many curious where I was from. They were guessing, Chinese or Japanese? (I can’t only understand these two words, haha)

All metered taxis in Sri Lanka called tuk-tuk, I took once from Odel to hotel, it really felt differently compared to similar vehicle in Thailand. I mean, I felt stable and relax on the tuk-tuk in Colombo city; but I felt stimulating and little panic while taking tuk-tuk in Bangkok city. Why? I don’t know if any difference on the vehicle structure, however their driving style is the main reason here. In Bangkok, many people tend to drive fast and in dangerous snake move… road is wide. In Colombo, most roads are narrow, drivers normally drive slower with their own set of traffic rules.

Generally I love this memorable Sri Lanka trip. Blessed with the beautiful places I stayed, amazing natural scenes and friendliness of people. It is so good to have this exotic exploration.

We had a walk in tea plantation after breakfast. The weather is warm in day time with cooling breeze in the hill.

Our guide leading us in the front.

A Japanese temple on the hill.

Buddhist temples in the hills

A helicopter parking lot in the tea plantation.

After two-hour walking in tea plantation, we were on our leisure. My bath tub is largest and deepest seriously, children can just swim in it! That was why I think this was nanny’s room previously. Unfortunately, the bath tub looked old and not clean enough, else I really wanted to have a dip.

Another guests (a couple) found their way for private time especially we were big group with children occupied the bungalow. They can have their meal at front yard but we need larger table.

The water in swimming pool is so cold. Guess who visited the swimming pool most frequently? Villages dogs. The servant told me not to put the shoes outside the door, dogs like to play with them.

We have fresh roses in our room and bungalow. These roses are as big as my small fist!

The garden could have well-maintained. Look at the before-and-after picture, the garden was full of beautiful lovely flowers in the past and now scattered flowers. The old picture – featuring Bustock family in 1994, was also the only colour picture among of all old pictures.

A morning dew on flowers making these flowers so lovely adorable

Initially I thought the helpers watering flowers in the morning, but soon found out all plants were wet and the grass was damp and cold. (I hate wearing shoes on the grass)

Guess the gardener didn’t grow the roses as fast as they cut them. The bungalow will look heavenly stunning with many flowers! May be only flower lover cares about this.

Different roses in the bungalow.

She looked adorable, shy, fully-bloom

Different species, different colours have their own scents. I love the rose scent of this champagne red species.

A hidden path

Said bye to Kirchhayn Bungalow, we moved to Nuwara Eliya on next day morning. On the way driving down to the hill, this young man in black shirt, had amazed us. He managed to wave his bouquet in front of our mini bus at every twist and turn of hill roads. OK, a man tried hard to sell his flowers. On the next turn, again we saw a man in black shirt, waving a similar bouquet…wow… many were hard-selling flowers in this way I thought. Then on another turn, we saw the man again and only realised they were actually the same man. On the 4th turn, the driver stopped the bus and opened the bus door, see if anyone of us buy the flower. SLR1200, negotiated to SLR1000, still a little expensive …. He was rejected. Well, story ended? Driver said he will show up again and he was right! We saw this guy again on 5th turn, and 6th turn….. I was touched by his perseverance and asked the bus stopped, I was sold.

On the final night we had dinner at a respectable friend’s house in Colombo city, who helped organizing the tour for us. He knew more about flower men in Bandarawela. In fact, some were doing that for their living. In fact, they will continue to do so to the down hill. I guess mostly foreign tourist will be convinced, a very good hard-selling tactic indeed. Nevertheless, I was happy to buy from him at his 6th attempt as he reminded me never give up even life is tough.

From Yala to Bandarawella takes several hours journey. Some of the group members wanted to visit a famous temple at Kataragama. We didn’t realize the temple complex is so large! We first greeted by a group of school girls, singing and dabbling their feet in the river of the temple complex.

Oops! What happened to the elephant?

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Ahh…the three elephants were having their bath in the river. People used coconut skin scrubbing the elephant skin, it seemed like a long, tedious, tiring cleaning process which took more than hour.

Along the river, people washing clothes, bathing themselves, playing in water, changing clothes, picnic… and… elephants pee and poo in the river too! I had a culture shock though I knew a little from TV program before.

Finally, the elephants had done their cleaning. A guy told me this elephant is eldest among the three, he invited me to touch the elephant but I refused politely after seeing what happened in the river. (I was only light-skin Asian in the temple, hence quite high-profile there)

Most Sri Lankan is Buddhist. This very large Kataragama temple has few temples resided. I didn’t join my friends to have a visit inside those temples because I was watching the elephant cleaning but my friends (one group visited the Buddhist temple, another visited Muslim temple) told me the temples were so large, around 1km walking distance inside.

Finally we reached Kirchhayn Bungalow. By the time we reached the bungalow at Bandarawela was already night, as we spent few hours in Kataragama. We truly trusted our driver’s driving skill, the narrow winding hill road had no road light! We did spend some hard time to find the Bungalow! There are five guest rooms in the bungalow, two for family, three for couple. We wanted to book the entire bungalow for private time, however another guest had booked a guest room much earlier than we did, so I forced to stay at a guest room at the back yard, since I was only single in the group. Only if I have an option, I would like to stay at Bustock room as shown in above picture. (“ v)

The chef only started cooking dinner after we reached. We had hot and fresh Sri Lanka dishes.

My bed, the only room without name. I guess this was a nanny room in the old times? Because it was at the back yard, the room was very cold and I couldn’t request a hair dryer after shower since they locked the back yard door at night… no phone & wifi in room, but I didn’t try hard enough to knock the door of servant room (next to back yard) for help either.

We were going to check in Chaya Wild Hotel. But hey, looking at the surrounding environment, is the hotel located inside a jungle??

Pheww… the hotel looked “aboriginal” and comfortable. The hotel reception is just next to the swimming pool and safari tour office.

We were shocked when knowing the hotel is just within 10 minutes walking distance from the crocodile pond! (o .O)^

Look at the surrounding of the hotel, we were staying in a hotel in safari park! The hotel staff invited us to see a sleeping leopard via a powerful binoculars at the top roof. If you have binoculars, you can just sit back and relax with glass of beer/wine while searching for animals around with binoculars. Hmn…that was exactly what a group of British tourist doing.

This is my chalet, or the hotel room.

The wildest hotel I have ever stayed. We were warned by hotel staff during check-in. Do call reception for escort if we leave chalet after 7pm and during very early morning. A family in our group stayed at another chalet and they had a light meal outside their chalet, some monkeys attracted by the tasty smell and came to join them. Their neighbour even saw an elephant passed by their chalet! The escort told me that both mild and dangerous animals like rabbit, elephant, snake, crocodiles had been strolling around the hotel premises but basically my chalet was quite “peaceful” during my stay.

The bedroom is romantic decorated.

Spacious bathroom that can accommodate me and few leopards.

I was surprised the mini bar was fully stuffed. Yes, no mini-mart near by.

Again, we were little worried when we saw the jeep was not fenced initially! However, we realised the reason as soon as we enter the safari. We departed from hotel on 5.30am to the ticket office of safari tour as we need to queue up to buy the entrance ticket. There were a lot of jeeps – a lot of tourists, the sky turned light by the time we got the ticket and heading to park entrance. We chose morning tour as we had been advised animals dislike hot sun and tend to hide away from being seen. Morning air is very fresh and less dusty as the sand road is little wet due to rainy night.

The jeep tour is extremely bumpy like horse riding, luckily I didn’t suffer car sick. The jeep driver will help to spot animal along the way and inform us. We managed to spot many wild buffalos, many peacocks, many spotted dears, some beautiful birds, few eagles, few wild chickens, few big lizards, few crocodiles, a water snake and an elephant despite everyone was looking forward to seeing leopard. The driver told us the peacock had sent signal to all leopards to hide away from jeeps. Ya…. We saw one suspicious male peacock stood on tree and howling suspiciously when we were getting near to the suspected leopard’s zone. I guess these wild animals must be getting annoyed from noisy engines sound and a big number of curious human everyday. Now we understand why all jeeps need not to be fenced.

I lost some pictures while transferring files from camera to laptop. Couldn’t recall what this giant rock called. Every jeep will stop by at this beach area for a while. This is also can be BBQ/picnic area.

I had some jungle trekking experiences in rainforest during puberty, this was my first time trekking with jeep, I had fun. The safari tour was approx. SLR3303 per person for our group, jeep + entrance + tax.

I had few “safari” tours in the past, all with fenced jeeps… especially when a big bear shaked the small jeep in a Korea theme park, or tigers were just few meters away from jeep in a Malaysia resort park… but they all feed by human, not wild. This is real safari tour in national park before I can afford a South Africa Safari tour. (“ b)

Well, we left for tea plantation at Bandarawela in afternoon after the safari tour. Hence we had our lunch as early as possible. A large, cute-looking squirrel joined the feast too! Oh.. some small squirrels haunted in the hotel from time to time.

Along the journey to Bandarawela, we spotted several wild elephants…. Yet we were so hard to spot one in safari….

A rainbow! Suddenly I was very easily impressed with any natural scene.

Unlike my other group members who prefer most Indian/Arabian flavour at Grand Hotel, Nuwara Eliya, I personally liked the meals in Chaya Wild Hotel most. They served more international cuisine and some Sri Lankan flavours, especially liked their variety of salads, every meal they served 90% of different tastes.

I never thought I would be visiting Sri Lanka one day but life is unpredictable.

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We were heading to Mirissa Beach, which was nearly 4 hours drive from Colombo airport.

We stayed at a private villa in Mirissa Beach.

Though the private bungalow is just next to beach, the sea waves are slightly strong and rather fine for surfing instead of swimming. Not a problem, both sea water and normal water swimming pools are faced to sea view.

The security guard opened the wooden gate for us, so my feet could taste the sea water of India ocean.

The beach is so clean and unpolluted, after all it is quite private. I felt safe and comfortable to walk on bare feet. Due to raining, We cancelled the plan of seeing turtle eggs laying at night.

My spacious room on second floor. Sleep with air-conditioner and fan on as all windows were tightly closed because I don’t want to be visited by mosquitoes at night. The weather in January is generally nice and warm.

Mirissa is popular for whale-watching, the journey departed from the ‘’port’’ of a fishing village. Don’t be surprised of their ‘’luxury’’ standard, it is two-level anyway and they called it big Observation Boat. We paid USD50 each and I believe our driver had good commission from the price, since we organised the tour last minute with the driver. However, what we concerned was actually the stability of the boat while giant whales swam around. Anyhow, where else can we get such price for whale-watching? Please let me know 😉

Sri Lankan has their unique way of catching fish, their fishing boat is different from what I have seen.

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Big group of us boarded the upper observation desk. The upper level people have cushion on floor, where the people on first level have sitting chair. Then we “floated” all the way to the whale-watching spot. Some, especially young kids had terrible seasick. We adult had dizzy head at the least, fortunately most of us only had small portion of breakfast before the trip and we didn’t take the served breakfast on boat too.

I managed to survive the 3-hour trip without vomiting. An hour swung to the watching spot, eye-hunting the whale for an hour, and another hour head-floating back to port. The first hour was still tolerable for me because I was excited to the new experience, the second hour was quite uncomfortable because the boat stopped and waiting for whales, thus it swayed badly with sea waves. However, the dizziness was unnoticeable when we were focused on looking whales and busy recording the video. The third hour, basically I was hanging on the handrail and sleeping all the way to the port, felt like sleeping on sleeping net with waves sound music.

Blessed with good weather, we spotted many blue whales. Crews helped us to look for whales, then we gained experience and know how to spot the whale. We didn’t see giant white whale or dolphins on that day. It was interesting trip overall, however I wouldn’t be going the same trip second time, the journey was uncomfortable and my head still feeling heavy after landed.

I hope you didn’t get bored with my Naruko reviews because I have more Naruko reviews to come, or may be, I will get uninspired and bored to write Naruko review first (“ b). In fact, my room was stuffed with Naruko products when I decided to cut down my budget on skin care this year due to my other financial plans. As a skin care veteran, neither I will comprise the skin care quality.

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This is the Narcissus New formula ( Normal – Dry Skin types ) in 2012. Besides this Totol Defense AA foaming Wash marketed as gentle cleanser, Narcissus DNA Repair Foaming Wash is another cream cleanser from the Narcissus series, which claimed strengthening skin self-defense against environment stress and revitalize skin energy. Just my left brain had reacted better against fancy marketing words, all I want for cleanser is gentleness, hence I get this basic formula.

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The white mousy content is very alike with other Naruko cream cleansers despite the different fragrances, all suitable for normal – dry skin.

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Naruko claimed this new formula will foam up better than previous formula, so I was expecting bubbly wash actually. The fact is, non-well-foaming is the nature of amino acid surfactants (eg Sodium Lauroyl Glutamate & Sodium Lauroyl Oat Amino Acids). Every time I have to use more amount (1.5-3cm) in order to generate “sufficient” foam for acquiring sensation pleasure. Even though with such generous amount, the foaming process was still under my initial expectation. To be frank, this deters me from re-purchasing though I like the gentleness. Unless I will be diligent using foaming sponge/net, then it will be easier to lather.

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Cleansing Test

(Shimmering lipstick and pencil eyeliner)

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It irritates if the foam contacted with eyes accidentally but overall it has very mild citrus scent, mild foaming and mild cleansing power. Probably too gentle to certain people. I liked this cleanser didn’t make my skin feeling dry after using cleansing oil. If you are looking for a foam wash that can cleanse stronger, I hope my simple test here will save your money. If you are expecting very mild cleanse for all skin types, I think this is fine.

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Although it seemed to be “useless” in cleansing, I would still consider to re-purchase Naruko Rose cleanser for dry skin if can’t find better option, especially for morning facial wash. From my rating, clearly my first preference will be Rose scent, follow by Narcissus then Magnolia last. Did they improve my skin? My answer is prevention is better than cure. ThisNaruko Narcissus Total Defense AA Foaming Wash is selling at RM29/120ml online – Naruko Malaysia.